Zero-cost traffic generation techniques for offline education and training institutions!

Under the epidemic, online education has taken advantage of the situation and developed rapidly. So how can offline institutions break through the siege of online education and training institutions? The author believes that utilizing the Internet’s “pond theory” will greatly help offline institutions.

An epidemic has given rise to the "boom" of online education:

• Recently, Yuanfudao Online Education publicly announced the completion of a new round of financing of US$1 billion. According to public information, this is the largest single financing in the education industry.
• At the same time, leading Internet companies have also entered the market: Alibaba opened the door to education with DingTalk;
• The educational short videos of Kuaishou and Douyin reached their peak; in March, ByteDance announced that it would vigorously develop the education field.

Faced with the "encirclement and suppression" of powerful online opponents and Internet giants, can offline institutions only sit and wait for the harvest?

That’s not necessarily true. There is always a silver lining after a dark cloud. Because of the epidemic, the concepts of offline institutions and parents are evolving at an accelerated pace .

1. What should offline institutions do?

1. Offline institutions still have a greater advantage

During this period, offline institutions quickly acquired online capabilities , which will give them an even greater advantage in the future. According to a report released by Aixuexi in March, 90% of institutions have already started online teaching;

Due to the popularity of online classes, their shortcomings (Aixuexi Report: parents are most worried about students' attention, eye health, teacher-student interaction, etc.) have also been exposed. In the future, parents' choices will be more rational.

According to the laws of development, it will take a long time for giants to penetrate the market. At present, offline institutions still have great local advantages.

Therefore, at this stage, offline institutions only need to prepare themselves and wait for the resumption of classes.

2. The student reserve should be started as early as possible, and WeChat personal account may be the best way to attract traffic

So, what should be done first in preparation? There is a saying that goes: Traffic is the essence of all business .

Therefore, next, offline institutions need to get ahead of the giants and attract local users first. Only by attracting traffic first can they build a private traffic pool and then convert and spread it.

At present, for small and medium-sized institutions, I believe that using personal WeChat accounts to attract traffic is the best choice.

First of all, WeChat is still the largest user traffic platform. App Annie recently released the "2020 Mobile Market Report", which pointed out that WeChat is the application software with the most active users in my country.

Secondly, WeChat personal accounts, WeChat Moments, and WeChat groups all have regionalized and interest-based social attributes, which can reach localized and targeted customers, and the promotion cost is almost zero . Moreover, in terms of the quality of traffic (conversion rate to orders) and conversion cycle, recommendations and referrals from agency employees are basically the same.

▲Data source: 2019 Education Industry Customer Acquisition White Paper

Therefore, for small and medium-sized organizations that have limited promotion costs, personnel experience, and energy, but want to get ahead, using employees’ personal WeChat to attract traffic is a very good way.

3. Concept of pond drainage method

Next, I will use the pond theory (also called private traffic pool) often used in the Internet industry to teach you how to attract traffic at low cost.

Let me show you the effectiveness evidence first. After some operations, 30 to 40 group members will actively add me as a friend.

Pond theory: The place where customers gather is the pond. According to the company's marketing goals, the preferences and characteristics of customers in the pond are analyzed, and flexible marketing strategies are adopted to ultimately win deals.

How to achieve it specifically? It is divided into four steps.

2. How to implement the pond theory

Step 1: Gather materials

First, analyze the users and find out what content they need at this stage. Then quietly embed ads into the content to give them some benefits before you can open up the situation.

Therefore, the first step is to analyze the pain points of parents at this stage and create materials that attract them. How to understand their pain points?

1. Ask your students’ parents or observe their social circles to find commonalities;

Let me teach you a quick observation method. Search for "children" in the WeChat search bar and look for the content in Moments. You can quickly see the relevant Moments posted by parents.

▲Example of content in parents’ circle of friends

2. Initial clues can be seen from some public data reports.

Search for relevant keywords such as "primary school student report", "parent report" and other keywords.

For example, the "Report on Homework Pressure in Chinese Primary and Secondary Schools" shows that 75.79% of families have had conflicts over homework issues. Homework issues may be the culprit for the decline in happiness of Chinese parents, the deterioration of parent-child relationships, and conflicts between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law.

▲Report on Homework Pressure in Chinese Primary and Secondary Schools

Then, next, we can interpret the needs of parents based on the pain point of deteriorating parent-child relationship.

After analysis, one of the solutions is to adopt positive discipline methods , get closer to the child and win the child's trust.

After finding this need, you can collect relevant materials: short videos, online courses, e-books, etc. (these materials can also be obtained by searching keywords).

Step 2: Find users

After collecting relevant materials, the next step is to connect with users. Before you can connect, you need to find them first. As mentioned before, the users must firstly be local (preferably within a 5-kilometer radius), secondly, they must be precise (families with children of appropriate age), and thirdly, they must be numerous. As smart as you are, these users are basically hidden in WeChat groups. So, we need to find these groups and blend into them.

There are 2 methods:

1. Ask your parent clients which local groups they have joined;
2. Visit businesses within 5 km and join these groups.

Such as restaurants, small supermarkets, and snack shops, community group buying is very popular now, and many businesses have set up groups that basically cover people in the surrounding areas . Almost all of your customers are hidden in them.

You can find these groups by observing or asking after arriving at the store. Usually, since store owners need to sell goods, these groups are easy to join and the group owners are almost 100% approved.

▲The group I joined

Here is a small reminder: you need to prepare a small account . After the big account joins, pull the small account in. As for why, I will talk about it in the next step.

Step 3: Activate user

The next step is to attract and activate your target customers. Didn’t I just say that you should prepare a small account? This comes in handy at this time.

1. Ask questions with a small account and answer with a big account

Please start your "performance".

▲“Self-question and self-answer” in the group

2. Activate other targeted users

Later, you can also shout in the group:

▲Activation example image

The advantages of this passage are:

Avoid advertising

Without any links, it does not feel like an advertisement, thus avoiding being ignored or removed from the group chat;

Activated other users

Asking "Who else wants it" will make the user think "someone else has already got it, I'll be at a loss if I don't get it." Moreover, those who want to get the information are all your target customers.

Let the user reply and complete the role change

The user changes from a passive recipient to someone who actively asks you for something. When he is in an active state of asking, he will not feel repelled by you.

After the first sentence was sent out, it was quickly flooded in the group. At this time, one by one, the users who responded to the private message said: “Add me and I will send it to you right away.

Step 4: Guided experience

After adding the target parents’ WeChat, you can then prepare some other information packages, such as e-books, audio books, etc.

When chatting with users, appropriately hint that you are a teacher and can give them a lot of advice and information on education. The more frequent the interactions, the more successful the subsequent conversions will be.

Of course, before the conversion, there is another important step, which is to invite parents to participate in trial experience/open classes .

Here we suggest you make the course into a product/registration link and send it to parents , and tell them:

Mom XX, don’t you have any questions about XXXX? Would you like to bring your children to attend this course?

Why make a link instead of sending the course directly?

1. The benefits of linking the trial class

Show more professionalism of the school

This is just like a Taobao store owner and a WeChat merchant selling products at the same time. The one with links will definitely be better. After all, the prices are public, and the link page also has detailed course descriptions, which can increase users' trust.

Carrying user information

Making a link can carry the user's information, making it easier for you to understand the user better. Whether or not he has entered any information can tell whether he has high intentions.

Note: If the person is not very interested in signing up, you can give him a small gift of equal value next time you recommend the course to him to attract him to sign up.

2. Generate a course link using the online store function of the school manager

So, how do you generate a course link? Here I would like to recommend the online mall function of the school manager system.

The online mall is equivalent to the school’s own “Taobao store”, and the school can put any courses and items on the store.

▲Online store page

The operation process is as follows:

▲Online mall operation process

▲Edit course page

After editing the course, you can not only generate a link and send it to parents, but also generate a QR code and use tools such as Fanke Quick Map to quickly make a poster and paste the QR code on the poster. After parents scan the code, they can see the course details and sign up.

▲Parent registration page

After registration, the student's relevant information will be automatically synchronized to the system, which is convenient for two reasons:

Convenient class scheduling

Teachers can schedule classes online without having to re-enter students;

Convenient to follow up conversion

The information will be imported into the customer lead pool to facilitate follow-up conversion after the trial class.

Of course, in order to promote subsequent conversions, it is also recommended that trial classes cannot be selected randomly (many schools allow children to experience full-priced classes), and it is best to design them individually .

3. Design suggestions for experience classes

Urgent need

Although your course is in a vertical field, it is best to find a point of entry that meets the needs of the general public. For example, dance institutions can train children on how to prevent hunchbacks, and cultural institutions can train children on how to cultivate their concentration, etc.

interest

Non-rigid demand, but beneficial to users and can bring a sense of accomplishment, such as Rubik's Cube class, origami class, hands-on experiment class, etc.

Low price

Compared with ordinary courses, it is relatively cheap and there is no need to hesitate too much, but it is not recommended to be free because it can filter out freeloaders and improve user accuracy.

Strong experience

Use the best teachers in the institution to teach, and the service must keep up;

Systematization

It is best to come up with a set of systematic courses to attract traffic, with the content of each course progressive and clearly connected, so that users can understand it at a glance and feel that the organization is very professional.

For example, the following traffic generation course is a good example.

▲A popular drainage course in an institution

Creating materials, finding ponds, activating users, and guiding the experience; these are the four-step pond drainage method. I hope it will be helpful to you.

Finally, it is important to remind you that after successful traffic diversion, the promotion of each link in the next steps such as conversion and dissemination should be a cycle like traffic diversion.

From the above operations, we can see that we cannot just do things on our own. Only by keeping close to users and letting them push and participate in this cycle can we achieve the ideal effect.

Related reading:

1. Four user growth strategies for online education institutions!

2. Three major monetization models of online education!

3. Practical operation of Douyin account in K12 education industry!

4. TikTok operation strategy for K12 education industry!

5. Community fission method in training and education industry!

Author: Auntie Cai

Source: Auntie Cai